In 1670 London, architect Christopher Redmayne has designed and built a new house for merchant Francis Polegate, who throws a party to celebrate its completion and invites Redmayne as the guest of honor. But the party comes to an abrupt end when one of the guests is murdered on the doorstep. The architect vows to discover who spilled blood on his newest creation, enlisting the help of his good friend Constable Jonathan Bale and his dissolute brother Henry Redmayne to bring the killer to justice. The author of the Elizabethan Theatre series, featuring Nicholas Bracewell as a stage manager and amateur sleuth, and the Domesday series with surveyors Ralph Delchard and Gervase Bret, Edward Marston here takes us to Restoration London, where Redmayne and Bale uncover crime amid the newly reinstated aristocracy.